Drinking Water

At least 22 million Americans rely on groundwater as their main source of drinking water. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is authorized to deny federal financial assistance to projects that could contaminate "sole source aquifers"--the only source of drinking water for certain communities. As of June 1992, EPA had designated 56 sole source aquifers across the country that serve more than 22 million people. This report discusses whether the Federal Highway Administration followed established procedures for referring two highway projects located over the Edwards Aquifer in Texas to EPA for review. It also examines whether there are potential nationwide weaknesses in the mechanisms that trigger reviews of federal financially assisted projects that may contaminate sole source aquifers.

GAO found that: (1) according to the provisions of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between FHwA and EPA, FHwA should have referred one of the two highway projects in Texas to EPA for possible review but did not; (2) groundwater officials from most of EPA regional offices indicated that there are weaknesses in the principal mechanisms used to identify projects for possible EPA review; (3) the sole-source provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act do not require federal agencies to refer projects to EPA for possible review, and EPA does not have adequate resources to identify projects on its own; (4) EPA has negotiated MOU with some federal agencies specifying the types of projects that should be referred to EPA; and (5) most regional officials are concerned that the existing MOU are not effectively identifying all projects that should be referred to EPA.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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